Years ago, I had a conversation with a fellow artist that has stuck with me and continues to inspire me to this day. We discussed our favorite films from that era, and I mentioned how much I loved a memorable image from Gus Van Sant’s film “My Own Private Idaho.” The image is part of a brief montage in the film, featuring an old wooden barn tumbling from the sky onto a desolate road. This moment appears amidst a series of memories reflecting a lost past. I was telling my friend how many ideas this particular image struck me conceptually, poetically and really inspired in me.

My friend interjected with a profound exposition of the conceptual framework they were using in their own practice, focusing on images of abandoned man-made structures, particularly roofless houses. This served as a vehicle for reflecting on colonialism and post-colonial reality, which was deeply validating for me since the image of the roofless house had always fascinated me.

During this conversation, I was reminded that throughout my childhood— which I had only recently left behind— I sought out abandoned structures and spaces to explore. I spent a lot of time daydreaming and imagining the stories contained within these crumbling buildings. I loved to hypothesize about the events and labors that had occurred in these places. 

There are many photos of me, for instance, straddling the huge barrels of artillery guns left behind by the French army on Gorée Island, facing the Atlantic at the entrance to the bay of Dakar; or exploring the bunkers below, and wandering through the old slave quarters. However, I mostly remember my solitary explorations of abandoned buildings as a child in Africa, and later as a teenager in the United States, when I looked for clues and artifacts for my “archaeology,” as I called it back then.

I was captivated by these shells of once vibrant lives, slowly eroded by the elements, their contents crumbling into dust and soon destined to blend into soil forgotten by time. This image serves as a monument to a people’s existence, fading into obscurity as their stories dissolve, just as those who knew them have either vanished or are already long gone.

To me, these structures—especially those located in isolated areas—instill a strong desire to catalog and document what I observe. This is my way of seeking to understand the stories and lives that have existed in these places.

Why had you come here? Why had you left? What had happened to you? In some cases, there is a clear understanding of the tragic or inevitable circumstances that led people to move on, abandoning their homes, livelihoods, and often their ancestors. These circumstances include war, conflict, famine, poverty, loneliness, disease, and in many of the places where I have lived, drought, desertification, and other environmental disasters.

Sometimes I would stumble upon a different type of abandoned dwelling, like a mansion left to decay after its family had died out, or industrial buildings that had been abandoned when their trade or products became irrelevant. In these cases, the structures remained, frozen in time, their original purpose long forgotten.

An abandoned wooden cabin, once belonging to a whaler, sits on the edge of the cold, krill-rich waters of the northwestern Atlantic. It is surrounded by a dark, verdant pine forest and overlooks a black pebble beach that hugs a deep ultramarine bay. This bay was once a nursery for North Atlantic Right whales, which were hunted to near extinction for their blubber, baleen, amber, and bones. In their place, the rich, goopy oils found in the American West became the prominent source of energy and the driver of commerce.

The outline of a small shack, once used by slaves, stands beside a grassy field that used to be fertile farmland. This shack was essential for long, arduous harvest days, as returning to the main plantation would cut into precious sleep and energy.The outline of a small shack, once used by slaves, stands beside a grassy field that used to be fertile farmland. This shack was essential for long, arduous harvest days, as returning to the main plantation would cut into precious sleep and energy.

Standing in its shadow and gazing at the bay, I can imagine what a sight it would have been to see the “Putup” slowly feeding on dense clouds of krill while countless seals basked on the black pebbles. As I stood there, contemplating the now whale-less bay, I wondered what the Mi’kmaq thought of that whaler, waiting to slaughter this ally of Glooscap, the Creator. I also imagined the loneliness of the man who waited for the whales to return when there were none left, and all of his peers had moved on to cities growing along the coast to work in labor-hungry factories.

I have wandered through abandoned stockyards, exploring barns and stalls that were once used to corral livestock for the discerning eyes of buyers. I stood beside an auction block that now serves no purpose, next to long-unused train tracks that used to transport livestock north and east to the hungry industrial centers of the Upper Midwest and Mid-Atlantic.

These structures, celebrated the lives of people who rarely took the time to reflect on the meaning of their existence  —Their focus elsewhere, consumed by the immediate challenges and needs of their existences. These edifices, etched with the joys, sadness, fears, safety, pains, desires, and a myriad of emotions lived and lost. Today monuments to stories—sometimes abandoned, sometimes forgotten, and often left to the vagueries of contemporary molds they could not fit themselves into.

These structures remind me of the shells found in the intertidal zone along coastlines, left behind by various creatures, either in death or out of necessity—similar to a hermit crab looking for a new home. They symbolize specific moments in time for individuals and reflect the creativity that has enabled humanity to evolve and grow without changing the fundamental aspects of our bodies. At the same time, they also represent many mistakes and instances of senseless destruction caused by humanity.

These abandoned architectures are also visual representations of many different social political, colonial, economic and philosophical shifts in societies and cultures. A roofless house is no longer a shelter, an abandoned mining conveyor; just a dinosaur that has lost its food source; a forgoten coastal bunker is just a hermit crabs abandoned shell. and of course the countless structures of oppression around the world a constant reminder of the cruelty humans are capable of affecting on each other. 

These structures serve as poetic symbols for how human memories endure, even when the storytellers have vanished. Since childhood, I have been obsessed with the idea of freezing these thoughts and the emotions they ellicit in me, into single images. I continually photograph these markers, but so far, I have only been able to capture their surface—the crust, the peak—of this faint yet profound concept of time.